Intoxication
by Flaignhan
Summary: Karma's caught up with him and now he's gone. Karma will, eventually, catch up with her one day too, and there's not much she can do in the meantime but use her time well and try to level the playing field.


**A/N: **So I thought this would only be about 1500-2000 words. How very wrong I was. Considered splitting it, but then decided that that's loser talk, so here it is, all as one. Enjoy.

* * *

**Intoxication**

**by Flaignhan**

* * *

"Shotgun not me," she says rapidly, raising her hand into the air.

Coulson turns to look at her in disbelief, while Fury smirks and tosses the assignment brief towards him.

"No fair," he breathes, before reluctantly reaching out and taking the file. "That's not like a thing now, is it?" he says to Fury. "You can't just call shotgun on assignments, can you?"

"Do _you_ wanna argue with her?" Fury asks, an amused smile fixed on his lips, and Natasha folds her arms, fighting to keep the smug expression off of her face.

"I _hate_ clean ups," Coulson grumbles, flicking through the pages of photographs. Natasha glances over and notes that a good portion of Greenwich has taken a real battering. The iconic domed roof of St Paul's Cathedral now has a gaping hole in it, the once neatly manicured lawns around the library now have deep muddy trenches, the paving slabs cracked and upturned.

"Have fun," Natasha says with a small smile.

"Yeah, _thanks_," he replies sarcastically, swiftly shutting the file and dropping it back down onto the desk.

"We've spoken to Dr Foster," Fury says, interrupting before any more childish exchanges can take place. "She's given us the low down on what went on. Thor made a statement too, but he's still in pretty bad shape." His eye is fixed on Coulson as he speaks, his face stern. He presses the tips of his fingers together and leans back in his chair, apparently trying to find the right words.

"What?" Coulson asks, shifting in his seat, his cufflinks glinting under the beam of the spotlights embedded in the ceiling of the office.

"Loki's dead," Fury says abruptly, his gaze not shifting from Coulson for even a millisecond.

Natasha's breath catches in her throat. The news comes like a punch to the chest, not because she's _sad_, not because of any sort of feelings towards him. If anything, she should be glad he's gone, especially after what he put the world through last year, after all those lives he took, the homes and businesses he destroyed. She had always assumed that Asgardians were invincible, that they could be hurt, naturally, but even if they were to throw everything they had at one of them, it wouldn't even put them in intensive care. And yet, here she is, faced with the news that Loki is dead.

"Good," Coulson says. There is a distinct chilliness to his tone, which is only to be expected, given everything. She wouldn't blame him if he threw a god damn party. He's been through hell because of Loki, more than he'll ever realise.

"He died saving Thor's life."

For the second time, Natasha feels that horrible thud in her chest, and Coulson shifts uncomfortably in his seat.

"_What_?" Natasha says in disbelief.

"I know," Fury sighs. "Never saw that one coming, I gotta admit."

"_Why_?" Natasha asks, still unable to process such an event. The last time she saw Loki he was chained up, like a muzzled dog, and Thor was the one who was holding the leash. She can't see Loki's pride ever managing to forget that moment, not even if Thor was in life-threatening danger. Besides, Loki tried to kill Thor a good half dozen times during his stint on Earth, and before that, with that mess in New Mexico. Why the hell would he turn around at the last minute and sacrifice himself to save the brother he hates?

Fury shrugs, raising his hands in a gesture of confusion. "He was always crazy."

Natasha raises an eyebrow. One final act of good does not strike her as the act of a crazy person. In fact, it suggests to her that Loki's time in captivity may have actually knocked some sense back into him. Perhaps the prospect of an eternity spent in one cell was enough to bring him full circle.

"Read the statements if you want," Fury tells her, pulling open his desk drawer and taking out a much thicker file than the one he gave to Coulson, stamped in red with the words 'LEVEL EIGHT'. She reaches forward for it, sliding it towards herself before she flips open the front cover. There are pages and pages of information, including all intel on Thor, Jane Foster, and Selvig. The section regarding Malekith is considerably sparser, though there are a couple of photographs and CCTV images that show a half blackened, ghostly white face bearing a glare that could give Fury a run for his money.

"I'll have May prepare the bus," Coulson says, straightening his tie before getting to his feet. He turns to Natasha. "Agent Romanov," he says, with a polite incline of his head, then faces Fury again. "Sir."

"Enjoy," Fury says, his mouth twisting into a small smile as Coulson throws him a withering look and leaves the office. As the door closes, Fury's smile softens as his attention returns to Natasha. "It's real messy over there," he says, leaning back in his seat and resting his elbows on the arms of his desk chair. "He's gonna hate it."

"Rather him than me," Natasha replies, standing up and taking the hefty London file with her.

"Funny," Fury says, just as she's about to leave. "That he should have a change of heart at the end, don't you think?"

Natasha shrugs. "They were brothers for hundreds of years. It's gotta mean something."

Fury nods. "Maybe," he says quietly.

Natasha leaves, the folder tucked under her arm, and heads back to her office. Once there, she closes her door and settles down in her chair, putting her feet up on the desk. There are some benefits to being level ten, and having her own private space is one of them. She starts with Jane's statement, explaining the Aether and how she came across it on an industrial estate on the outskirts of London. Then comes the attack on Asgard, the death of Thor's mother, and the mass funeral in which hundreds of Asgardians sailed off into the stars. Natasha chews on her lower lip as she reads, a guilty tug pulling at her insides. Thor was here when they needed them, but where were they when Asgard was under attack? Their city destroyed, his mother, his soldiers, decimated, all in what sounds like the space of thirty minutes. She doesn't know what they could have done to help, but there must have been something, even if they'd been tasked with protecting Jane, so his mother wouldn't have had to face Malekith alone.

She pauses in her reading to consider the possibility of some sort of cross-realm panic button, an alarm that issues a call to arms, no matter what, for both sides to use when they're in trouble. Maybe it's a conversation best left until Thor is back on his feet. According to the overview, he's recovering at a London hospital, having taken quite the beating.

She returns to Jane's statement, which has gaping holes in it from bouts of unconsciousness. There is enough there to get the basic picture though, and when she gets to their face off with Malekith, and Jane's statement recounts the sensation of the Aether being drawn from her veins, it is with some confusion that she reads the next part.

_Thor threw all the lightning at it that he could, but I didn't get to see much. Loki was shielding me._

Shielding her? The same guy who would have destroyed this entire city was protecting a human? Natasha skips over it and continues to read, but it only gets more ridiculous. Jane's recap of the fight that broke out is somewhat confused (understandable given the trauma her body would have suffered from the Aether) and Natasha has to read and re-read some of the sentences to get them clear in her head.

_They threw one of their antimatter grenades at us. Loki pushed me out of the way and tried to run, but he couldn't. It was going to take him and I couldn't _do_ anything. Thor grabbed him just in time though, thank god. _

Thor saving Loki is nothing out of the ordinary. But Loki saving Jane, _again_. A horrible sense of realisation is crawling up Natasha's body, from the tips of her toes right up her legs, creeping its way chillingly along her spinal column. She knows this kind of behaviour. She knows it's less of a change of heart, less a thirst for redemption, and more the last desperate acts of a man who knows he has nothing left to lose, a man who knows he has all but a few minutes to make peace with his brother, because if one of them was ever going to get out of that mess alive, it was always going to be Thor.

She reads on, trying her very best to ignore the lump in her throat. She can normally skim through these reports quite easily, what little empathy she has locked up tight in the back of her mind. Thor and Jane are different, however. She knows these people, cares about these people. And Loki…well, she recognises more of herself in Loki than she'd ever admit aloud.

_He was going to kill him. The hammer didn't even _touch_ him. There wasn't anything Thor could do, and Kurse just kept hitting him and hitting him and he was going to beat him to death, I know he was. But then Loki saw what was happening. He'd just killed about five of the Dark Elves. I don't know how, I didn't even know he could fight like that but [PAUSE] I've never seen anybody run so fast. When he got there, he just stuck the sword right through him and [PAUSE] well, it didn't really do anything, but then Kurse turned around and [PAUSE] He was smart, we always knew that. He'd attached one of those grenades to Kurse's belt. Even when he had a sword going through him, he was still a quicker thinker than any of us. He set it off and, well, it worked. But then he died in Thor's arms. We didn't have any medical supplies, and we couldn't get him back to Asgard in time, and Malekith still had the Aether but [PAUSE] Loki _died_. _

Natasha has only met Jane Foster a handful of times, but it only took her thirty seconds to learn that she's not an idiot. The palpable sense of regret echoing through her words is not the result of some easily swayed idiot feeling sentimental over someone who once did one good thing after a lifetime of sins. It's not for show, it's not to make it seem like she really cared about Loki after all. Natasha knows, in her heart of hearts, that if Jane could have done anything to save Loki's life, she would have. In fact, she knows that Jane, who is far more compassionate than she, Natasha, will ever be, would have tried to fix him even if she knew it were a futile endeavour. She's not the sort of person who can give up and walk away. Natasha, on the other hand, her compassion would have stretched to making it as quick and painless as possible. That's the closest she'll ever get to being a good person.

The rest of the statement is filled with scientific terms that are, perhaps a little beyond Natasha's knowledge, but she gets the general idea. Malekith destroyed, half of Greenwich taken with him, and it's all over before sundown. When she moves on to Thor's statement, the words are somehow flatter, more drained. He's lost his mother and brother in the space of a day, so it's hardly a surprise. Every sentence is tinged with a sense of his mind being elsewhere, somewhere back in Asgard perhaps, and maybe even somewhere back in time.

_I knew he would set our differences aside for this…for her. And he did avenge her in the end. I never thought, not for a moment, that he would [PAUSE] that he would go so far…_

_I should have been able to save him. He's my little brother, it should have been me saving _him_, not the other way around. _

There is a knock at the door, just as she's reaching the end of Thor's statement for the second time. It lines up with Jane's, same info, different voice, and so she sets the file down on her desk and calls for her visitor to come in. The door opens and Clint enters, his bag slung over his shoulder.

"Didn't know if you were still here or not," he says. "It's past six, you know."

Natasha glances up at the clock and realises she's spent the past two hours immersed in the details of the London attack, reading and rereading specific pages, lingering on quotes about Loki, while an uncomfortable feeling swirls around in her stomach. She can't understand why she's bothered, except there's a tiny little voice at the back of her mind which likes to throw poisonous explanations at her.

_You might not have tried to take over the planet, but eighty people in two days? Please, you could have done that in two _hours_. And _would have, _given the right orders. _

_You were never going to be a hero, and neither was he. Yet here you are, with your own private office, because you lived long enough to reap the rewards of making things right. _

_If he hadn't saved Thor, you'd be dead right now. Everybody would. _

"You okay?" Clint asks.

"Loki's dead," she says briskly, standing up and tucking her chair under her desk. She runs a hand through her hair and lets out a shaky breath. She cannot let this get to her. She _will_ not. Karma's caught up with him and now he's gone. Karma will, eventually, catch up with her one day too, and there's not much she can do in the meantime but use her time well and try to level the playing field.

"I heard," Clint replies, then nods to the file on Natasha's desk. "Is it true he saved Thor?"

"Yeah," she replies, pulling on her coat and grabbing her bag. "You wanna get dinner? And drinks? I think I need a drink."

Clint watches her carefully before he answers, his eyes narrowed as he absorbs every detail of every minor facial movement.

"You're completely different to him," Clint tells her quietly. "You had your entire self taken away from you, he didn't. He was a spoiled brat with daddy issues. You were…" he trails off. He's never really gotten the hang of speaking about her past, but she can't criticise. While she may be able to speak of it in a detached, clinical sort of way, she's never really gotten the hang of _thinking_ about it, choosing instead to lock it up and file it away.

"Drinks?" she asks, heading towards the door.

Clint nods and shifts to one side, allowing her to pass him. "If that's what you want."

"Yeah," she says. "It's what I want."

* * *

She stumbles through the doorway, throwing an arm out to steady herself against the wall of the hallway. Her head is swimming, a giddy numbness spreading right down to her fingertips. She kicks the door shut behind her and it bangs loudly, the security chain rattling against the door frame until she grabs it, fumbles for a moment in the dark, then eventually secures it.

She kicks off her shoes, her balance a little off kilter, and sways for a moment before she decides that she's steady enough to tackle the walk to her bedroom. When she reaches the lounge, however, she stops, goosebumps raising on her skin. She turns, and her heart freezes when she sees his silhouette. He's standing in front of the window, looking out onto the streets below, but even with his back to her, even with more shots of vodka in her than she cares to count, she recognises him immediately.

"So the whole dead thing's working out great for you."

In the faint reflection on the window, she sees his lips twitch, though they don't stretch to a smirk.

"You're drunk," he says plainly.

"Yeah," she replies, raising a hand to her hair and combing her fingers through it clumsily. For some reason she seems to be prioritising casualness over and above getting to safety. He hasn't tried to kill her yet, however, which is a promising start.

"Why?" he demands, his tone having a touch of haughtiness about it, as though she ought to have stayed sober for an unplanned invasion of her apartment. On the scale of things, an invasion of her home is much more preferable to a citywide, or worse, worldwide invasion. The foolishly optimistic part of her that only ever rears its head after a dozen shots of vodka is hoping that this is just a social call, as opposed to a pre-world domination drop in session.

"Because I drank," she replies, not bothering to reign in her sarcasm.

In his ghost of a reflection, she sees him look up towards the ceiling exasperatedly, before he turns around at last.

His face is far gaunter than she remembers, the dark circles under his eyes more pronounced than ever, easily visible even in the dark apartment. His hair is wavy and unkempt, and he looks more like a washed up junkie than an alien super villain.

"What happened?" she asks, taking a tentative step closer to him. He watches her movements, but he doesn't have the same brightness to his eyes that she remembers, nor the same interest in his surroundings. Maybe his time in an Asgardian prison cell did affect him after all.

"It wasn't a fatal wound," he tells her quietly.

"But you pretended to die anyway?" She raises an eyebrow and takes another step forward, reaching out a hand to rest on the back of the sofa. Her legs are starting to feel like they're made of marshmallows, and she wills herself to sober up, to claw her way back to a frame of mind where her reaction speed might rival his.

"It was that or the dungeons," he replies. "And I couldn't face it, not now..." He trails off, looking past her, into the darkness of the kitchen, and Natasha's curiosity spikes.

"What?" she asks gently.

His eyes refocus on her in an instant, his gaze shrewd with an edge of hostility. He doesn't say a word in response, but Natasha can guess. She's spent enough of her day reading Jane and Thor's statements of events. They both had both mentioned one thing with the same stumbling of words, and the paragraph in the transcripts had contained more than one bracketed 'pause'.

"Your mother," she says, taking another step closer. There is an uncomfortable pang of sympathy, tugging on the inside of her throat. She knows how it feels to lose a mother, knows the sensation of having had your chest blown away with a shotgun, knows the gaping hollowness that such a loss leaves behind.

He turns away at her words, focusing his attention on the streets again. She knows she's hit the nail on the head though; the memory of the afternoon, dimmed by excessive vodka consumption, casts a few of Thor's rambling sentences to the forefront of her mind.

_He cared for her, always. Even when he hated the rest of us, even when he tried to hate her, he could not do it._

_My father gave up on him, and I later, but she never did. And she was right not to, she was always right..._

He is still, his entire body as rigid as a statue, and she wonders if this loss has sent him crashing down to reality, his priorities rearranged, his fervent desire for a throne extinguished.

"Why are you here?" she asks, taking yet another step forward, her fingertips trailing along the top of the soft leather sofa back.

He doesn't answer her, and in his reflection she can see that his expression doesn't change. He looks as though her may not have heard her, but she knows him better than that.

"Loki," she says, her eyes fixed on the glass, straining to detect any hint of movement, but there's nothing. She sighs, then retreats to the sideboard, opening one of the cupboards and pulling out a bottle of vodka and two glasses. She pours a generous amount into his, and a little into her own (it would be rude not to) then screws the cap back on the bottle and heads back over to him, a drink in each hand. She joins him at the window, pressing one of the glasses into his hand, and he blinks, looking down at it with a frown.

"Her name was Frigga, right?" she asks uncertainly.

"Yes," he croaks, then clears his throat and says more firmly, "Yes."

"To Frigga," she says softly, raising her glass into the air. Loki hesitates for a moment, his eyes still fixed on the vodka, then raises it, clinking the rim of his glass against the side of her own. He drinks deeply, and despite his best efforts, he pulls a face as he swallows, apparently unused to her particular favourite brand of emotional numbing.

"I'm sorry," she tells him, as she looks down into her glass, swirling the clear liquid around the bottom. "From what I've read she seemed like a great woman."

"She is - _was_." He corrects himself as soon as he makes the mistake, and lets out the softest of sighs. He drinks again, downing the rest of the vodka, and this time he doesn't purse his lips in distaste, nor hunch his shoulders as it burns his throat.

"And it sounded like she was a total badass, too. I can respect that."

"She taught me how to fight," Loki replies, a ghost of a smile playing at his lips. "Odin was always with Thor in the sparring yard, teaching him to use the hammer, a broadsword, an axe. He never bothered with me."

"But she did?"

"Yes," he says, then he swallows and takes a breath. "She taught me how to use a dagger, how to counter attacks from those with larger weapons, and she taught me my magic..."

"She did?"

"I think she rather hoped I would use it for good," he continues. "But I was always using it to try and relieve the boredom."

"You invaded a planet because you were bored," she repeats, wanting to clarify that she has understood him correctly.

"That was slightly different," he says with a shrug. "And nothing compared to the things Odin has done in the past."

"If you hate him so much then why set your moral standards by him?" She swirls her vodka for a little longer, then downs it in one, not wanting it to go to waste. When she lowers her glass, Loki is staring at her, his expression dumbstruck, as though he is seeing her for the first time.

"My mother loved him," he says, his surprise melting away in an instant as he regathers himself. "And she wouldn't love a terrible man."

"I'm not saying he's a terrible man," Natasha reasons, her words a little slurred now that she's topped up her vodka levels again. So much for sobering up. "I'm saying if you disagree with him so much, if you really are chalk and cheese, then why use the same yardstick? Why not have your own yardstick? Because the way I see it, if the best you can say about what you did was that you're not as bad as a guy you detest, then you're still not doing too great."

She turns, taking his empty glass from him and heads back to the sideboard. She picks up the vodka bottle with a clumsy swipe of her hand and unscrews the cap, letting out a huff when it slips from her fingers and drops to the floor, rolling out of sight into the darkness. She carries on regardless, splashing a good amount of vodka into both glasses, now that she's certain he's not here to kill her. He still hasn't given her a straight answer as to why he's ended up in her apartment when he's supposed to be a corpse in some far off world, but she gets the feeling that he doesn't even know himself why he's wound up here.

She sets the vodka bottle down heavily, then picks up the glasses, concentrating on keeping her grip on them steady. She turns around, but her path is blocked by a leather clad torso, mere inches away from her. She inhales sharply, the glasses tumbling from her grasp and smashing on the wooden floor, shards spraying over their feet.

"Shit," she breathes. "You scared - "

She doesn't get to finish her sentence. Before she can even begin to mourn the loss of perfectly decent vodka, his hand is on her jaw, and then his lips are on hers, and she can't process the situation. Her hands grip the edge of the sideboard, her the soles of her feet grazing over the shattered glass as she makes a poor attempt at finding her balance. She needn't have bothered however, because Loki's free hand grips her waist, steadying her as he closes the gap between their bodies, his hips flush against her own.

He breaks away from her, his lips moving to her neck, and her eyelids flutter shut as she tilts her head back to give him unrestricted access. There is a small, sober voice yelling at the back of her mind that this is Loki, that last year he would have killed them all on the spot, given half a chance. But this is this year, a slurred voice reminds her, and she of all people knows how much difference a year can make, sometimes even just a day. On rare occasions, it need only be a moment.

"What are you doing?" she breathes, biting down on her bottom lip to suppress a gasp when he nips at a particularly tender spot on her throat.

"What does it look like?" he mumbles, his words muffled as he grazes his lips across her collar bone.

"But _why_?" she persists, turning her head just enough so that his next kiss lands on her cheek, and not her mouth. As enjoyable as this is, she wants answers, and she won't be silenced. She might be drunk, but she's not an idiot.

He ignores her, and makes a second attempt, this time capturing her lips in a soft, entirely distracting kiss that sets her nerves alight with pleasure. For someone so cold and cruel, he's very good at making it feel as though she has liquid gold running through her veins, heat spreading to every inch of her body, desire burning in the pit of her stomach.

She pushes him away as the sober voice penetrates her empty mind, and she must use more force than she intended because he stumbles back, his ribcage swelling as he draws in deep breaths. She almost smiles when she sees that there is the faintest hint of colour in his pale face.

"Why," she says again breathlessly. She holds her hands up, ready to rebuff any more advances, but he doesn't make a move, just stares at her, the words not coming.

"Tell me," she says, lowering her hands and taking a step closer to him, careful not to tread on the glass. She reaches out, trailing her fingers down the leather sleeve of his coat until she reaches his hand. She twines her fingers with his, and he looks down, his mouth ajar, his breaths still uneven.

"I just want to feel alive," he murmurs.

She knows that feeling, knows it all too well, and it's enough for her. The sober voice is silenced, the drunk one too, and she takes him by the collar with one hand, tugging him close, their lips meeting as her free hand tangles in his hair. She doesn't care anymore, not about the shard of glass that's just about grazing the arch of her foot and is in very real danger of piercing her skin, nor about the fact that he's gripping her hips so tightly that she's certain his fingertips are going to leave small dotted bruises behind. She doesn't even care that he's so much bigger and so much stronger and so much more _sober_ than she is, and the further she allows this to go, the more vulnerable she makes herself.

She can taste the vodka on him, and it only increases her desire for him, that oh so familiar taste becoming more extraordinary by the moment. When she breaks the kiss, she does so reluctantly, and his warm breath mixes with hers in the small gap between them. After a moment's hesitation, she steers him slowly in the direction of her bedroom, and his gaze intensifies with every step they take. There is no hint of excitement, nor satisfaction, no sense of smugness that he's got her, that after she beat him all that time ago on the helicarrier, that he's now levelling the playing field. She is well aware there are a thousand things in the world he wants more than her at this moment, things that he would give his right arm for, but those things are beyond the reach of even a god. He can have her though. This she will give him.

She kicks the door of her bedroom shut once they're inside, and they are immersed in blackness. The blinds are shut, blocking out every ounce of light pollution from the LED billboards, the glowing street lights, and the bright strip lighting from twenty four hour offices. Her hands reach for the edge of his coat, and she slides the stiff leather over his shoulders and down his arms until it drops softly to the floor. His lips find hers in the darkness and she pushes him back towards the bed, her fingers fumbling with the buckles securing yet another layer of leather over him. It's slow work, there have to be at least half a dozen of the damn things, but she perseveres, gradually becoming accustomed to the thick, uncooperative fastenings, until at last she is able to slip the tunic off of him, where it joins his coat on her bedroom floor.

Her patience is wearing thin however, and she gives him one final shove, sending him stumbling back and landing on the bed with a loud creaking of mattress springs. She smirks, and two loud thuds suggest that he has kicked off his heavy, battleworn boots. She steps over them, then clambers onto the bed, unsteady from her evening of revelry, and settles herself comfortably in his lap. Her fingers immediately seek out the hem of his soft undershirt, and she pulls it off of him in one fluid movement. Finally she feels like she's getting somewhere, and she runs her hands slowly over the smooth skin of his chest, pressing soft kisses against his throat. He lets out a shaky sigh of contentment, and with an infuriating absence of haste, he eases her top up, carefully pulling off and tossing it to one side.

She can't stand the slowness, and so she grinds herself against him, earning herself a shallow intake of breath from him. It has the desired effect, and his hands are more eager now, tugging the waistband of her jeans down over her hips, his hands brushing lightly over the skin of her thighs as he slides her jeans off. She gasps when he touches her, gripping his shoulder tightly, her nails sure to leave marks, if not puncture the skin. He is gentle, but sure of himself, and she buries her front teeth in her lower lip in a vain attempt to keep quiet, while her toes curl in bliss. Her heart swells in her chest, and she's sure it will burst, as heat floods through her entire body, her breaths becoming sharper with every moment that passes.

Her head is clouded with vodka and desire, and it's anybody's guess as to which is more responsible for her intoxication. She can't concentrate on anything as he caresses her, and she leans forward, resting her forehead against his, his warm breath fluttering across her skin and leaving goosebumps in its wake.

"Loki," she breathes, reaching her hand up to cup the side of his face. At the sound of his name, his touch increases in pressure and Natasha can't silence the moan that escapes her. She grips his hair tightly as her breathing becomes more and more erratic. She wants him right now, but she won't beg, she won't.

She moves slowly against him, and his steady breathing falters; it only takes a few more seconds before he flips her onto her back, all languidness cast aside in favour of a much more preferable needy fervour. Her breath catches in her throat as his body covers hers, and she loops her arms around his shoulders, her fingers sliding into his hair as he discards the last of his clothes. He hesitates before he goes any further, but then she pulls him down into a desperate kiss, wrapping her legs around his hips and closing the gap between them. It's all the encouragement he needs, and though she is blinded by need, she dimly registers some of the tension in his shoulders dissipate, as the weight of his concerns fall away from him and he allows himself to become just as lost as she is.

* * *

She sits up abruptly, her head pounding, and presses her hands against her face. Her heart is beating rapidly against the inside of her ribcage, and it takes a few deep breaths for it to slow to a more acceptable rhythm. She looks around, and notes that nothing is out of place. Her blinds are closed, as is her bedroom door. Her clothes are scattered on the floor but that's not unusual after a heavy night, everything is as it should be.

And yet, as she sits there, wrapped snugly in the duvet, her mind is plagued by a lingering sense of unease. She closes her eyes, cradling her aching head in her hands, and tries to piece together the events of the previous night. She remembers Clint coming to her office, that's fairly clear, and she remembers ordering a burger at the diner, that's also clear. She even remembers strolling into Clint's favourite dive, but then the vodka had happened.

She lets out a heavy sigh and lays back on her pillows, staring at the ceiling. Naturally she blames Clint for this. Every time they go out, he always insists upon another fruitless attempt to drink her under the table. Despite the fact that he's on watered down vodka (as if she were never going to find out about his little agreement with the bartender) and she's on the strongest stuff the place has to offer, it's always him who caves first, but not before she's taken one hell of a battering.

She thinks briefly of Coulson and smiles to herself. Halfway across the world, he's suited and booted and cleaning up Thor's mess. Something jolts inside her gut as her thoughts of Thor lead her to thoughts of Loki. She had spent far too long thinking about him yesterday, a strange feeling of second hand grief swirling around in her stomach after reading Thor's break down of Malekith's attack. It seems so criminally bittersweet that Loki should come good at the last moment, only for any chance of redemption to be snatched away from him. He would have had to wipe a lot of red from his ledger, but he had thousands of years to balance his books, or so he might have thought.

Perhaps it was her preoccupation with him that led to such strange dreams. Her unconscious mind has never paid him a blind bit of notice, but last night her dreams had been so vivid, most likely exacerbated by an overindulgence of vodka. Next time, she won't take Clint's bait. Next time she'll be sensible. And next time, she'll tell herself exactly the same thing the following morning. She's predictable like that.

She throws her forearm across her eyes and lets out a heavy sigh. She needs to get up and go to work, but it feels like an Everest sized challenge. She can't call in sick; Fury will know and he will give her hell. Clint will turn up on principal too, even though he'll be in a far worse state than she is. It is that thought that motivates her to sit up once more, blood rushing to her head. She throws the duvet off of her before she can think of a million reasons as to why she ought to stay in bed, then stands up, grabbing her dressing gown from the back of her chair and pulling it on, tying the cord tightly at her waist. One glance at the clock is enough to tell her that if she hurries, she could make it in dead on nine, but dead on nine is for losers, and so she dawdles towards her bedroom door, stifling a yawn as she pulls it open.

She sees the glass just as she's about to tread on it, and she stops abruptly, her bare foot suspended in mid air. The penny drops with a painful clunk, and she opens her dressing gown, looking down at her hips to see a series of small round bruises marring her pale skin. She wraps herself up again quickly, her jaw set stubbornly as she tip toes over the glass and heads into the kitchen to fetch the broom.

Either she's an idiot, or that vodka must have been stronger than she thought. She'd like to believe it's the latter, but for the first time in her life, she is worryingly close to the former.

Denial strikes her as an appropriate course of action, and by the time she arrives at HQ, she has forced it from her mind, leaving her free to send a smug smile in Clint's direction when he staggers in much, much later. By that time, the entire building is buzzing with the news of Loki's death, and it becomes damn near impossible to avoid any thoughts of him. People are talking about it in the elevator, in the canteen, dipping their heads into other department's offices and asking if they've heard. He's fooled the entire universe by the sounds of things, and she thinks, with a small smile to herself, that she might just let him have this one.

* * *

**The End**


End file.
